Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
We walk up to the top of the hill and just look around. There are kegs everywhere. I’m talking like… thirty or forty of them. “Where did they get all this shit?”
I say this to myself, so I’m not really expecting an answer. But Pell does answer me. “They got it from him.”
He’s pointing to the black tomb. Well, he’s pointing to the gold dome on the top of the black tomb. And on the top of that gold dome sits Batty, black bat wings lazily spread out and drooping. Like he’s wasted and can’t be bothered to tuck them up along his body at the moment.
There is a ledge along the edge of the dome and that ledge is lined with crates. I don’t know what, exactly, is inside those crates, but there’s definitely bottles of alcohol in there because he’s tossing them to waiting satyrs and nymphs below.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Despite Pell’s promise to be reasonable, these words come out with the power of his new magic. He shakes the world. In fact, he shakes the world so hard, Batty loses his balance on the gold dome and goes sliding down the side of it, laughing and cackling like he’s a fourteen-year-old boy who just got drunk for the very first time.
When I look around, I realize that quite a few of our new roommates have fallen to the ground from this rumble.
But they aren’t taking Pell seriously. They are all laughing and hysterical with happiness. I’m just turning to Pell, just about to tell him that he should not take this personally, that they are just wasted, but he’s already rumbling again.
“I said! What the fuck! Is happening here!”
This time, tombs crumble. I’m not talking walls either, I’m talking entire tombs. And the earth beneath my feet cracks open a little. Pell has to grab my arm and tug me into him so I don’t accidentally fall in.
The music stops and as the rumble recedes, the place goes quiet. The monsters near us pick themselves up. A silence comes over the sanctuary. But it’s not one of reverence, like you might find in a church. It’s something else. An air of… I dunno. Disdain, maybe. Someone coughs and another snickers.
“Someone had better answer me right now.”
Pell is not fucking around. He is mad. His voice is making the whole place rumble and his horns are lit up with fire.
It’s not the first time I’ve seen that, of course. I’ve used that fire to make magic and he often gets a little glow-y when he’s turned on during sex or having a nice sleep. But this is the first time I’ve seen it appear in anger. And it is different. There are flames coming from his horns.
But not just his horns. There are flames coming from him. They flicker off the tips of his fingers, like all he has to do is wave those fingers a little and the flames might fly out in all directions.
He’s either really fucking pissed and I’ve never seen him this way, or… this is new.
I wish I had time to think harder about this but I don’t. Because Batty is right in front of us. “What the hell are you doing? You can’t just throw that voice around like an animal.”
“Animal?” Pell scoffs. Then he takes a step towards Batty and before I even know what’s happening, Pell has pressed his flat palm into Batty’s chest, making him fly backwards. Batty crashes into the remains of a tomb wall, stunned, blinking, as the plaster crumbles down into piles of rubble on top of his head.
The monsters gasp. A few nymphs shriek. Like Pell is the unreasonable one here, and he’s scaring them.
I sigh. Give me a fuckin’ break. They are not scared. They are… aghast. But not in an astonished way. An appalled way.
This is not going to go well. Even though Pell has every right to be pissed, and Batty deserved that push, especially after what happened in town, Pell is coming off like an authority.
And I mean that in the most oppressive way possible.
They are going to turn on us. And I don’t think we can stop it at this point. Somehow, since the nymphs came, the whole vibe of Saint Mark’s has changed. The vibe used to be one of peace and whimsy mixed in with a healthy dose of confusion. But now it’s just… disdain.
“Well?” Pell demands.
Cookie appears and I’m in the middle of a sigh of relief—because he’s so reasonable—when he spits on Pell. “You don’t run this place, Pell. Saint Mark’s belongs to all monsters.”
Holy shit, my language spelling works on him too. I’m excited to hear him talk. After all these weeks of him pampering me with amazing food and mothering me like I’m his personal responsibility, it’s kind of amazing to be able to understand him.